YouTube’s New 6-Second Ads Can’t Be Skipped

We’re used to watching ads on YouTube. These pre-roll ads are played before the video starts, we have to wait for five seconds before the skip button pops up that allows us to continue to the video if we don’t want to watch the entire ad, and we rarely ever want to watch an entire ad. However, the new six-second ads that will soon go live on YouTube can’t be skipped, so we’ll have to be patient for one more second.

YouTube calls this product Bumper Ads. These are short videos of just six seconds each unlike existing YouTube pre-roll ads that range from 15 seconds to a minute.

Google says that Bumper Ads work best for advertisers on mobile since viewers are often watching videos on the go while on a mobile device, or they tend to have shorter attention spans for what they’re watching on mobile.

“In early tests, Bumpers drove strong lift in upper funnel metrics like recall, awareness, and consideration,” Google writes in a blog post, early testers for Bumper Ads included advertisers like Atlantic Records and Audi.

Advertisers will be able to use Bumper Ads starting next month, which means we’re going to see a lot of unskippable six-second ads from May, so let’s start training ourselves to be patient for one more second before the video we really want to see starts.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Web
Tags: ads, YouTube